


Time After Time

by boneandfur (whiskeyneat), whiskeyneat



Category: Open Heart (Visual Novels), PlayChoices
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - World War I, F/M, Secret Santa, Smut, Violence, War, World War I, ethan is scottish in this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-10
Updated: 2021-03-10
Packaged: 2021-03-16 23:27:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,122
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29957496
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whiskeyneat/pseuds/boneandfur, https://archiveofourown.org/users/whiskeyneat/pseuds/whiskeyneat
Summary: It's New Year's Eve in 1915 and Helena Valentine is on leave for twelve hours. Will she be able to say what's in her heart to Dr Ethan Ramsey, her superior at the field hospital, or will they run out of time? Written for a secret santa exchange on tumblr.
Relationships: Ethan Ramsey/Main Character (Open Heart)
Kudos: 4





	1. When This Lousy War Is Over

"Rookie." The rich Scottish brogue is rough as he catches Helena's arm in the darkness of a Flanders night. "What are you doing here?" 

The snow is falling thickly, beyond the ring of torchlight from the town square. In the reflection of the inky water, Helena can see the twinkling of fairy lights in the dark sky, and she steels her spine, only a faint tremor in her hands betraying a hint of fatigue.

Taking her grandfather's silver pocket watch out, she marks the time in her head: 

( _ Twelve hours, seventeen minutes, and thirty four seconds. _ )

That's how much longer she has until she must walk back to the train station and meet the girls, and doesn't she have a warm room waiting for her, and a little fire, and some of that Flemish wine that Aurora was always going on and on about back at Smith? Yet here she is, on the very last day of the year in 1915, and she cannot seem to move an inch from it. 

The strains of drunken soldiers singing makes her heart squeeze -- When this lousy war is over -- "I have official leave for the next twelve hours."  _ I would give my eyeteeth for twelve hours of sleep, but I can't sleep. Time was, I would have given anything to sleep, back when I was studying to be a doctor, back in Boston.  _

_ When this war is over _ \-- it feels like a lifetime before it began, just a little over a year ago. 

_ I'll be back someday, when this war is over, Helena Valentine. And then I'll marry you, and we'll dance until Father Time forgets we are mortal.  _

(But he had never returned, and she went about with a band of black mourning ribbon on her upper arm, hidden under her sleeve: the bruise in her chest expanding until she felt nothing there any longer but silence, until she got on a ship bound for London Town...)

Helena feels the supple leather of Ramsay's gloves, butter soft, against her wet cheeks. She does not know if they are wet from tears, or from snow. 

_ When this war is over, _

_ No more soldiering for me. _

There is a soft quality to Ramsay's blue eyes as he gazes down at her, brow troubled. 

"You should be asleep behind the lines, Rookie." He ties the hood of her threadbare velvet cloak under her chin, as though Helena Valentine is still that pretty maid from Boston, the one who ran off to France to join her cousins in the war effort, three seasons past. "This isn't the place to spend your next twelve hours. You should be curled up in your cot with that book you always carry around in your apron pocket --"

"Sherlock Holmes." Helena lifts her chin a fraction of an inch, and pushes her spectacles to the bridge of her nose, meeting his gaze squarely. "He would have made a brilliant doctor, Dr Ramsay, sir." 

"I am not disagreeing with you." Ramsay touches her elbow with his fingers, gesturing with his other hand towards the warmth and lights of the square. "But a bridge at nighttime, Rookie, even behind friendly lines, is not the wisest course of action." 

( _ Twelve hours, seven minutes, and twenty-three seconds _ .)

The bridge begins to vibrate slightly, and Helena feels her whole body tense, a hot surge of liquid burning just behind her lashes. She sucks in a deep breath and turns her head, just -- the movement as jerky as a film reel at the pictures. His mouth moves, sound traveling as though they are underwater.

_ Rookie! Can you hear me, Rookie?  _

That's what Ramsay has always called her, ever since he found out she was a student of medicine, back in Boston. He brought her from the field hospital in Poperhinge with him, all the way to a makeshift hospital just behind the lines in Ypres. Brilliant surgeon Bryce Lahela had been there too, since gone at Loos, or perhaps not gone, but she has heard no more of him, not even a whisper on the wind. 

Helena tears her gaze from Ramsay's mouth, looking towards the eastern sky. The darkness evaporates, opening up in a brilliant reddish gold splendor of color, and Helena feels the warmth of Ramsey's grip on her shoulder all the way down to her frozen bones. 

_ When this war is over, _

_ No more soldiering for me. _

_ When I get my civvy clothes on, _

_ Oh how happy I shall be. _

Her debutante ball in Boston, the one her father had insisted upon, before the Titanic sank and took his life away with it -- there had been fireworks at that ball. The guests had  _ oohed _ and  _ ahhed _ and the bells had rung for the New Year of 1910, a lavish decade of glittering splendor laid out ahead of them -- and she had fought for her inheritance, so damnably hard --  _ Let me be a lady doctor, Mother, I beg you  _ \-- years upon years, gone in the blink of an eye, working with only the most wretched of immigrants in the squalid slums, and then back home to Beacon Hill, to play the debutante. 

_ You must secure a good marriage, Helena, and put this silly dream aside... _

The world rushes in with a thunderclap as the artillery barrage begins, and Ramsay pulls Helena to his chest, his hand against the back of her head, wound tightly into her dark curls. She can hear his heart beating in time to the band --  _ one two, one two _ , the steps to the waltz. 

_ Eleven hours, fifty-eight minutes, thirteen seconds.  _ The pocket watch ticks on.  _ One two, one two.  _ She pulls back from Ramsay's chest, embarrassed, and turns back to the direction of the Front. 

_ It's hard to believe that only six hours ago I was in a field hospital just behind the front lines.  _ She hasn't realized she's said it aloud until she feel his greatcoat settle over her shoulders. It smells like him, she realizes with a shuddering breath -- like  _ him _ , without other men's gore staining him up to the elbows.  _ Smoke, and peat, and whiskey.  _

Once, two months ago, she'd found herself alone in his office to fetch more morphine, and she'd taken the liberty of burying her nose in his extra uniform. She had lost track of how long she'd stood there, nose buried in wool, until a stretcher bearer had rapped on the door and startled her.

"Yes, and you're a dammed bloody fool of an American chit." Ramsay clears his throat. "The war won't be over any faster if you continue to stare at it like that, Rookie." 

"Should just be another month." Helena tries, and fails, to sound chipper. "That's what Rafael says he heard from the Cordonians, who heard it from that fighter pilot, Jake Mackenzie, who heard it from the French Foreign Legion --" 

And any minute now, out there in the distance, Rafael will come chugging up to Edenbrook Field Hospital in his rattletrap old ambulance, and out will swagger Captain Beaumont of the Cordonian Calvary, dog in his arms and patch over one eye, with a wink and a grin, as if to say,  _ Well, I survived another match with the boys in gray _ \-- as if they'd just had a football match in time for tea -- or it will be that Mexican mercenary from the French Foreign Legion, swearing a streak as blue as those tattoos on his skin, the indomitable Sargent Salazar, or, or --

"Come on, Rookie. Let's get you warmed up." 

_ Eleven hours, eleven minutes, eleven seconds.  _


	2. In Flanders Fields

_ Women aren't doctors at the Front, Miss... what did you say your name was again? Ah, Miss Valentine. American. That explains it... But we do need good quality nurses... You'll be sent to France right away on account of your prior training... Jolly good, just sign the dotted line...  _

"I assume you'll have the watered wine, Rookie." Ramsay leans across the table, lightly tugging the menu from Helena's numb fingers. Every little boom makes her shiver, though she's adopted the English habit of keeping a stiff upper lip. Her grandmother has told her stories to curdle your guts, about standing on a hill at Gettysburg and watching her lover ride hell for leather into battle.  _ And I followed him, didn't I, chick?  _

"What brought you here? To the Front?" Helena cocks her head at him, and Ramsay's brows raise nearly to his hairline. 

"You're bold as brass.” Ramsay snaps his fingers. “I like that. Knew it as soon as you stepped out of that line of nurses that you wouldn't turn into a shrinking violet at your first amputation." Ramsay turns to their waiter, a Frenchman of elderly years with an ear trumpet. "We'll take your best watered wine for the lady, and a bottle of whiskey." 

Helena coughs lightly, and addresses the waiter in seamless French. "(What is the special today?)" 

The old man looks sad. "(I am afraid we do not have anything special. Just some eel ragout, and fresh bread my wife baked this morning.)" 

"(Then we will take that, and your best bottle of Merlot.)" 

When the owner has gone, Ramsay smiles broadly at Helena, showing white teeth against three days shadow of a beard on his jaw. "By God, you're a marvel. Never learned much French myself, besides what I've had to behind the lines." 

"Oh, my governess despaired of me." Helena shrugs, but cannot help smiling in return. "I can speak enough French to get by, you know, but I could never pass for a natural." 

"Well, you  _ are _ an American." But it does not sound like an insult. 

The eel comes, and she eats ravenously, less like a lady and more like the girl who downed seven glasses of champagne and then raced her brother from Boston to Concord on horseback. 

And Ramsay drinks. Thoughtfully. Mindfully. She does not remember, afterward, nor for many years, what they said, only how she had smiled and smiled until her cheeks hurt, and the ticking of the pocket watch. 

One two, one two. Tick tock. Eleven hours. Ten hours. Nine hours. Eleven minutes and eleven seconds.

_ No more standing to in trenches, _

_ Only one more church parade.  _

"I had a patron who paid for me to go to medical school, a well respected chap named Naveen.” Ramsay nurses his whiskey, rolling the glass with purpose between his palms. “After school, I joined the army to make something of myself, and went to India. My wife deserted me for another man while I was gone. She didn't like the army life, you see." 

Helena reaches out, laying her hand over his. Ramsay startles, but does not move his hand away, and instead flips it over, laying his palm flat against hers and caressing her wrist with his rough fingers. She drags in a breath, the sudden widening of his pupils making her lower abdomen flutter. "I ran away from home. No one knows I'm here, or I'd be dragged back to Boston to marry a Stirling and pop out an heir and a spare before the war has even gotten started." 

"You don't even want to know about what this war will look like if it keeps going, lass." Ramsay drains his glass, and pours them both another. "I'd tell you to go back to Boston, but I can see by that look in your eye that you'll see this thing through. I respect that." 

Helena does not trust herself to speak. The wine is making her thoughts slow, but she does not want this moment to end. 

Ramsay rubs a hand over his jaw. "That was back in '09. I hung my boots up, moved to Scotland, and threw myself into practice in Edinburgh. Then that damn fool shot a Prince, and well, here we are." 

Steady, silent. Their eyes meet and the watch ticks on. Helena feels as though she is drowning. His mouth moves and she only feels the heat of his palm against hers, her cheeks ablaze. 

_ 'Nurse! Nurse Valentine! Are you dumb or are you just deaf?! Hand me those scissors, and bring me another scalpel... These damned orderlies don't know what they're doing...' _

_ Their eyes meet across the bloody operating table. The soldier is mercilessly unconscious, a bloody piece of shrapnel in his thigh. He'd been screaming since he came in off the ambulance, a boy of no more than nineteen, a Tommy named Elijah... 'Mum, Mum, water, water...' _

_ 'That's a Blighty, Rookie. Your first. Are you going to faint on me, lass?' Ramsay's eyes lock on Helena's. She feels the flint of his gaze go straight to her spine, and straightens up.  _

_ 'No, Doctor. I'll be fine, sir.' _

_ 'I told you Americans have brass, Ramsay!' The surgeon, Lahela, winks at Helena in passing, but she does not notice. Her gaze does not falter under Ramsay's. 'Pass me the tweezers.' _

_ His mouth quirks, just a shade. 'Good girl.' _

"...Good God, Rookie, will you drink the whole bottle? I promise my company isn't as bad as all that." Helena feels Ramsay tug at her wine glass, and relinquishes it. The lamp has begun to burn low, and from the outside of the cafe is the sound of drunken laughter. "You shouldn't walk out there alone. Come on, I'll walk you back to your billet." 

"I don't have one," Helena confesses. She pats her bag, shamefaced. "I spent my money for the hotel on books... I can sleep on the truck." 

Ramsay shakes his head. "No, no, that won't do. We can't have you more dead on your feet than usual. I have a solution. It's a bit unorthodox. Do you trust me?" 

_ Eight hours, three minutes, seven seconds.  _

  * ••



Helena does not know why, but the lights from the star shells, all green and gold, make her grip Ramsay's arm tighter, and press against his side. At the corner, he stops and gazes down at her, a strange and wild new thing in his face, something she dares not name. 

_ Don't forget me, Helena Valentine. When this lousy war is over, I'll come back, you see...  _

"Tell me..." Ramsay brushes a curl back from her brow, his broad fingertips sending a crackle across her bare flesh. "Why did you become a doctor, Rookie -- Helena?" 

"I read a wonderful book." Helena ducks her head, and looks up at Ramsay from under her lashes, illuminated by the lamplight. Behind them, to the east, she hears the screech of a Minnie, and his hands tighten on her fingers. "It was written by a Scottish doctor who had served in India, on the Northwest Frontier." Her gaze skitters away. 

_ People said when we enlisted, _

_ Fame and medals we would win. _

"Ah. I knew a chap who served there, in his younger days." Ramsay tucks her cold hand through his elbow. The snow is falling thicker now, and they are nearly to the hotel. A quick word from Ramsay to the proprietor -- she hears the words  _ une chambre pour les jeunes mariés -- He knows French after all -- _

And before she knows it, she is sitting in a delectably steaming hot hip bath, strewn with lavender and rosemary. She washes her hair and cannot remember the last time she felt such luxury. 

_ Nine months, two days, thirteen minutes... _

_ When this war is over,  _

_ No more soldiering for me.  _

"You can have the bed. I'll bunk down with Medical Officers Gayle and Nguyen, from the -nth Platoon." Ramsay stands in the doorway, his cap in his hands, avoiding looking directly at Helena in her muslin shift. "We wouldn't want you to lose your reputation and have to leave the war so soon." 

"Stay." She feels her eyelids drooping, and pats the quilt next to her. "Please, stay." 

"You know I can't do that." Yet, she hears the floorboards squeak as Ramsay settles next to her on a chair. The inn rattles like a whizzbang and she grasps Ramsay's hand, clutching at it until the clattering of the teacups subsides. "Only a little longer, then, Rookie. Until you're safe." 

  * ••



Ethan watches Helena Valentine fall asleep. There is nothing he'd like more than to climb next to her in that big bed, to feel her lithe body against his. But it would be wrong, even though nothing will ever be right again after the war is over. But if he can keep her safe --  _ If I can keep her alive - _ \- he dares not finish the thought. 

“You wouldn't remember me, Helena Valentine, but I was the guest speaker of honor when they hung the plaque for your grandfather at the Royal Hospital, in Edinburgh.” Ethan whispers the words, barely a murmur. The whiskey has given him courage, here in a small hotel near the Ypres front. 

Ypres, the Race to the Sea. Generals called it a triumph, but the only thing the war has given Ethan thus far has been insomnia for thirty-six hours, a hatred of mustard gas and a pair of fine German boots from over the top. 

“He was an old surgeon, a medical man, who fought in the American Civil War, but he did great things for Scottish medicine, too, back in his youth.” Helena's fingertips tighten on his palm, and Ethan fears he has said too much. But he goes on, like a schoolboy at the confessional, for who can say when they shall ever have this moment again? And hasn't the war taught him by now to leave nothing unsaid? 

“You must have been not more than twenty-one, then. You were still unmarried, with a vast inheritance that folks said you'd squandered on medical school. I knew right then and there that Jonas Valentine would have been proud of you. I wanted to introduce myself right there and then…” 

_ But I was too tongue tied by your beauty, and couldn't find the words. Later, when I saw you again in Ypres, I couldn't believe my own eyes. I didn't want to tell you how I felt then... _

(But that will keep, until this war is over.)

Her grip loosens, and he knows she is sleeping. She sighs in her slumber when his lips brush across her dainty brow, and it is with everything inside of him screaming at him to turn around that he walks away. 

_ When I get my civvy clothes on, _

_ Oh how happy I shall be. _

  * ••



_ Forty-five minutes, thirty seconds.  _

The books are too heavy. Yet, Helena, an oasis of blue with a red cross on one arm in a sea of green uniforms, settles in with Sherlock Holmes.  _ Rookie...  _ She snaps the book shut, watching the landscape go by from the army van. 

_ I shouldn't... We shouldn't.  _ Ramsay cups both sides of Helena's face in his hands. The book drops to the floor. They are both damp from the bath, and his skin smells of cedar and lavender soap. 

>>

“We shouldn't overthink it... Ethan.” His name is sweet on her lips as the violet bonbons she'd been given by the landlady. She feels that intense throbbing between her thighs again, and hears Ramsay groan as he brushes his thumb over her bottom lip. 

“Oh, Christ... I'm afraid I won't be able to stop if I touch you there.” His pupils are enormous. 

“Then touch me here.” Helena caresses a fingertip over her collarbone, and when Ramsay's lips ghost along it, her knees go weak and she clings to his shirt, the only thing between their bodies thin muslin. 

“I'm going straight to hell for this, Rookie.” Ramsay shivers, his stubble rough against her neck. 

“Then take me with you.” Helena pulls the shift over her head and stands before Ramsay in the firelight. 

Ramsay pulls the quilt back, and Helena slides between the sheets. He pulls his shirt over his head, revealing a dark line of fuzz below his navel. Ramsay's mouth settles on her collarbone again, and then begins to move down. Helena moans as one thumb and forefinger expertly caresses her nipple, his mouth sucking gently on the other. 

"Pull my hair if you like that." Ramsay's leg is between her thighs and she arches her hips, groaning as she rubs against him. "Harder, oh god yes, you like that, don't you, lass..." 

A moan catches in Helena's throat as Ramsay swirls his tongue over her nipple, one hand fisted in his hair. She feels a hot sensation begin to build between her thighs, and arches her hips again, chasing that sweet pull. She feels his hands on her thighs and whimpers as his stubble scrapes against her taut nipples, whispering kisses down her belly, to what the medical books call her  _ clitoris _ .

"You'll like this better, I promise you that, Rookie." Ramsay sucks gently on the hood of her clit and she buries a scream in the quilt, fist in her mouth. He begins to suck firmly but gently on her clit, interspersing with rapid flicks and swirls against the hood. His hands are on her nipples and her hands are buried in his hair and her hips buck against his face again and again, her screams muffled by the din of the guns and the cotton of the quilt as she soaks his face and the bed, squirting hard and hot, her thighs drenched in her own cum and Ramsay's saliva. 

"More, please, yes, yes, more, I want to just feel you, please, please --" she feels the wet tip of his cock against the lips of her cunt and remembers Rafael bending her over in the carriage house, before the war, the sound of his grunts amidst the nickering of the horses, how she'd walked stiffly for days after, and how they'd fucked all summer in the loft... Until he followed the beat of the drum, and she...

"Ethan!" Helena's toes curl as she screams his name, hips arching, head smacking against the headboard. Her cunt tightens around his thick cock, feeling it pulse deep inside of her. He pins her wrists down and pulls her hips to his waist, grunting as he thrusts, hard and deep. His thumb is on her clit and he claims her mouth with his, she tastes her own sea salt sweaty slickness on his tongue, hips pounding together faster and harder and deeper until he collapses atop of her, his seed sprayed all over her lower belly and thighs. <<

Later, she will remember the exact way tbe quilt felt as he pulled it over her shoulders, tucking her in, embers in the grate and his lips ghosting across her forehead. 

  * ••



Twenty years on, when a new war is brewing, this is what Helena Valentine remembers: 

The air, so still and warm, with not a single lark singing. The earth smells of flowers and death, and she is sharing sterilizing duty with VAD Nurse Varma, whom she'd come over from London with. 

"I suppose you think you're better than me, being a real doctor and all, but..." Jackie's lips move, but Helena cannot hear what she is saying. All she can hear is a buzzing sound, a ringing in her head. 

_ One two, one two.  _

Her hands tremble with fatigue over the medical instruments. 

_ Thirteen minutes and forty-seven seconds.  _

_ Tick, tock.  _

The table begins to shake and she looks at Jackie, their eyes wide as they clasp hands -- and then they are running --  _ and the bridge is shaking, it's shaking Dr Ramsay, you shouldn't be out here, it's wartime you know --  _

_ No one can know about this, about us. You know that, right?  _

_ I know, Dr Ramsay. _

He cups her chin in his hand.  _ They say you're a grasping American chit, but you're my American chit now, and I won't hear anything against you. Oh -- and don't check your bag until you're on the truck back to the lines. I left something there for you.  _

_ Then you have this -- keep it until the war is over -- it was my grandfather's and it's over a hundred years old and it's still ticking on.  _

His mouth is warm on hers, tip of his tongue pressed against hers for a surprisingly electric surge. 

_ \-- "Nurse Valentine! Valentine!" -- _

Helena wakes in the morning with the ashes cold in the grate, Ramsay's greatcoat draped over her. It smells of peat and whiskey, and the faintest whiff of mustard gas. Her thighs are wet and she looks under the quilts and realizes her cycle has started, and she does not know why, but she begins to sob, whether from relief or terror she knows not. 

One two, one two.

_ (Twelve hours, seventeen minutes, and thirty four seconds.) _

Tick, tock. 

_ People said when we enlisted, _

_ Fame and medals we would win, _

_ But the fame is in the guardroom, _

_ And those medals made of tin. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is the NSFW chapter complete, in the secret santa exchange the person didn't want smut, but the characters insisted.

**Author's Note:**

> The song "When This Lousy War Is Over" was a popular WW1 war ditty.


End file.
